Chapter 9

The rest of the San Francisco trip was pretty much a blur, we shopped and went sightseeing every day, ate at a superb restaurant every night. No one wanted the visit to end and we all left little bits of our heart behind at that wonderful city by the bay. We've thought often about moving back there but the timing hasn't ever been right to do so, although we certainly hope to someday and we all visit at least twice a year now.

There was really now only two pieces left of important unfinished business. Tammy had finalized her retirement and had her things shipped to Tiny's house in Lovett. We alternated visiting each other most weekends, us driving down one weekend, them driving up to visit us the next and usually 'resting' the third weekend at our own homes, giving our loved ones personal quality time. It was a very good arrangement.

The women started doing serious wedding planning, with both bridezillas going completely overboard and determined to make it the single greatest (or at least most erotic) day of their lives. Tiny and I tried to stay out of the planning as much as possible and we just nodded our heads to whatever was asked of us. The only major sticking point was wedding location. Some serious thought was given to getting married all together in the Caribbean, as we still had the vast majority of the Foundation Money to go collect. This remaining problem was now becoming our other major priority that needed to be handled.

In the end, Tiny made a simple request that seemed to settle the location problem. Neither of the brides to be were particularly religious but no officiating judge or justice of the peace seemed to appeal to their sense of drama. Tiny offered this solution, "If drama is what you want, then there is no place better to be married in than 'The Church' in Lovett."

Lovett, as I think I've said several times before is a very odd sort of place.

It had been settled at various times since the early 1800's by various "outcast" groups of settlers, usually having odd and peculiar religious customs and practices. By the late 1960's and onward, odd and peculiar was definitely en vogue, and the County had a bit of a population growth with hippies and 'new age' folks discovering the existing quaintness and joining their own oddities into the community and fitting right in. Until the recent growth of a local software company and a small biological research farm, the single largest business in the area was the Nudist Colony, apparently one of the larger and well-known ones in the country which attracted a good bit of this sort of tourism.

"The Church" technically fell within the boundaries of the nudist camp and had embraced at least some of the core beliefs of every generation of the towns new immigrants, but particularly focused its emphasis on Honesty and becoming a better person inside. Tiny regularly attended this church and asked his wife if that location would be alright. She immediately agreed and Allison tentatively agreed pending a visit to see it for her self.

We visited the following weekend and it was a bit of a mental change to have to undress and go nude into church, rather than the usual dressing up in ones Sunday best. Instead of a cross at the altar of the church there were instead flowers. By the end of the service I found that I had enjoyed it immensely and so had Allison. I saw the point of the whole thing nearly immediately. Honesty was seemingly the number one core belief and it seemed to permeate everything in Lovett County. Shopkeepers seemed to actually respect their customers (and not just their money), husbands and wives seem to communicate better with each other and most importantly most people did what they felt inside was 'right inside' and the best thing to do, not necessarily the most advantageous thing to do. All of this was refreshing, but decidedly odd, especially with today's fast paced (and rude) modern big city life.

Being nude in church surrounded by several hundred other nude couples and individuals, I felt that there was no place in anyone's soul whatsoever for any form of deception. Literally, we had everything "hanging out" and there was nothing left to hide. I decided that I could grow very accustomed to this. We agreed this location option would work very well for both of our weddings and the Great Joint Wedding planning sessions began in true earnest.

We finally had to make a decisive plan for reclaiming Alfred's retirement stash from its offshore bank. We must have tossed a hundred plans around of the last few months for the best way to accomplish this but in the end we settled for the simplest plan. Tammy had one of her government contacts to track down the whereabouts of a certain forger that she had once met in a Naval investigation (he had been creating virtually perfect Government Military and Dependent ID's that locals were using to shop at the PX and Base Commissary). He was more than willing, for a small fee, to alter Alfred's and May's passports to fit two of us.

In the end, Tammy and I were the ones who went.

The plan went so smoothly we had to wonder if we were just dreaming, or if something else far worse was wrong and we just didn't know it yet. We established our identities at the bank and had the account unfrozen. We then set up a new secure transfer account with the bank's IT guy so that we could easily do future computer on-line wire transfers to one of just two approved accounts only. Allison's 'Settlement' account and a new Texas based account we had set up under our Foundation name. We had begun all of the IRS non-profit paperwork awhile earlier (it takes forever) and were expecting our final NPO authorization nearly any day now. Everything was done in several hours with no drama!

Tammy and I resisted the urge to celebrate and enjoy some proper sun on a pure white sandy beach, and we decided not to press our so far perfect luck and we headed home almost immediately, still giggly with excitement.

Alfred's slush fund was even more massive than I had guessed in my most optimistic estimates, and it was still growing! The wily old bugger had apparently written some secret computer code into the Syndicates main accounting computer (wherever that was, I did get the IP address for Tammy to research) that transferred small unnoticeable percentages of each individual transaction nearly every day. The Syndicate might have been recently decapitated, but it still looked like there was some in-bound money flow occurring, albeit significantly reduced from what it had been just a few months ago. It looked like they had been hurt, maybe badly, but they were not yet entirely out of the game.

Frankly, we had done our part and we had all suffered enough! We quietly agreed that the remains of the Syndicate was now definitely someone else's problem. I just hoped in the years to come I we would not regret that decision.

Just a few drops of rain can lead to a flood and Alfred's money had definitely flooded. Our Foundation was funded now for life and try as we might, we could just barely spend the interest, let alone significantly touch the account principal. Future generations long after us will be praising Alfred & May's names.

The Foundation finally legally established, we held a brief but official Board of Directors meeting. Allison, Tammy, Myra and I were the four voting Managing Directors and Tiny was elected Director of Charitable Operations. He would be the primary person responsible for carefully selecting the worthy individuals, groups and organizations that would receive our funding, approval of which by at least three of the four members was considered 'Agreed'. Our first checks went to several SDPD oriented charities and then the hospital in San Diego that had saved Allison's life, after her rescue. Her attending Urologist also received a check also more than suitable for establishing a Liver and Kidney specialty clinic at the hospital.

Just before the end of that meeting, Tiny submitted a proposal of his own. He handed me a letter from the County of Lovett, authorizing the Lovett Country Volunteer Fire Department to extend an employment offer to one Peter Wells the position of Medical Services Director.

This was a big surprise! I didn't know Tiny had been passing my resume around down there and the whole idea came as a bit of a shock to me. The money, hardly my most important criteria these days, was certainly suitable and idea of us all living permanently together now in Lovett had considerable appeal.

Allison of course loved the idea and if it was up to her we would have immediately accepted and started packing. Myra was frankly lukewarm over the idea; she badly wanted to go wherever we went, but hated the thought of losing her consultancy practice and part-time teaching.

Tiny paved over this little bump in the road by pulling out two additional letters, one also from the County offering her the position of County Director of Mental Health Services (with a 'huge' departmental staff of just three people, we soon found out) and the other letter being from the Lovett County Junior College inviting her to teach any health or science programs she might desire there.

That roadblock now finally gone, both of my women were already mentally packing for a permanent move to Lovett with Tammy and Tiny.

My decision to accept became a moot point. On our next trip down, I began looking for either a very large house to remodel for the three of us or find the perfect site to build a new one from scratch. Both Allison and Myra were hinting that their biological clocks were ticking and some child-rearing after the weddings should soon be a priority. Myra had been visiting a couple of ObGyn doc's along with Allison, and none of them could find any physical reason that should prevent Myra from now bearing a child to full term.

Allison told me privately later that when Myra had received this news she had cried non-stop for hours with sheer joy. She felt that if Myra could indeed bear my baby to full term this would bury forever those evil words spoken to her by her own father that she was a "A worthless cunt who couldn't hold her babies that no man would want to keep."

That one act alone would do more for her happiness than a hundred doses of Batch #31.

The women finally coordinated their final plans for the great Lovett mass wedding and a date was selected kind of by happenstance. While in Lovett one weekend, we were in the town fabric and quilting shop on the town square. The girls wanting to get some banner and decorative wall hanging ideas and were also looking at ribbons with the two shops ladies as they chatted about the approaching wedding date.

When told the then proposed date, a young girl of about eight, the grand-daughter of the shop owner, shook her head at once and said, "Oh no, not the eighth. That's a bad day and won't do at all." She then seemed to fade out for a moment, her eyes became unfixed and then she said in a very confident tone of voice, "Make it the twenty-eighth instead. That's a much better day, you won't regret it."

She then went back to coloring in her coloring book and paid us no further heed. As we left the shop, the girls finding some ribbons to use for decoration, the store owner, Sarah, followed the girls out and spoke with them privately for a moment until both nodded agreement and she returned inside. Later the women filled me in; the wedding date was officially changed to the 28th.

Why? Everyone in town knew that 'the sight' ran in that family. The senior-aged shop owner had a fair bit, her daughters had virtually none, but the one grand-daughter Lucy had it like an interstate highway. Nothing she had ever predicted had been proven false. If she said the eighth was a bad day, then that was more than enough for nearly everyone.

Come to find out later the 8th was a very bad day. An early tropical storm blew suddenly out of the Gulf and submerged everything between Corpus Christi and Freeport. There was major flooding and roads were washed out everywhere. No one could travel anywhere for the next two days and it would have been dangerous indeed if our guests had been driving on those small county roads to Lovett under those circumstances.

The decision to change the date probably saved lives and I never forgot it. Lucy was always welcome at our house and to visit us at any time at our jobs.

Lucy's mother Lorelei was always a bit distant to everyone including her own daughter. She lived in Lovett with her elderly mother Sarah but kept to herself and didn't interact much with others. She was rumored to be a bit 'slow' and free spirit that marched to the sound of music that only she could hear. There was no father present in Lucy's life.

She spent most of her time with either her grandmother or her youngest aunt Susan and her boyfriend, Alec. They were both handicapped, him being nearly blind and her without most of the use of her legs but they were without a doubt the two single happiest people together I'd ever met. Their joy and enthusiasm for life and each other were viral and infected everyone who crossed their path. They soon became some of our best friends but never our lovers (there was only room in their hearts for each other) and both were filled to bursting. Their story is one well worth telling, but it's not my place to recount it.

It would have been a major hassle to change all of the Foundation paperwork to our new Lovett address so we decided it would remain as a P.O. Box in Houston for at least now. This also provided us with a little bit of privacy at well, even now that the worst of the Syndicate arrests were over (it was just minor fish left now supposedly) everyone still wanted to keep a very low profile. Allison, Myra and I were still mostly staying in Houston for the moment, the women staying close for regular fittings of their gowns, which of course we men were not permitted to see but were told that they were 'absolutely unique'. I had wondered how a bride was going to wear white at a nude wedding. Boy, would I soon find out!

Checking the P.O. Box one day in Houston, just about as that sudden Tropical Storm was starting to hit, I saw a pair of usual letters that quite caught my eye. The first envelope was gold with silver details and bore some sort of crest. Inside was a brief hand-written letter and three appointment cards that would admit the bearers to an extremely exclusive and private ladies salon and spa, where walk-ins were absolutely not welcome.

Only Myra had ever heard of the spa name before and only vaguely knew it was insanely exclusive and catered to an 'invitation only' membership. She promised to make a few calls to find out more if she could, and thought she once used have a casual girlfriend who ran in those circles.

The other letter was a personal invitation to set an appointment to meet and have tea with a certain Mr. & Mrs. Henderson at our earliest future convenience. This was addressed to and specifically included all four of us as Directors of the Foundation.

Someone had somehow discovered a few of our secrets, and the question now remained whether to 'spring the trap' as it was by having the girls attend the Spa and/or the four of us making that appointment for tea. Again, at the end we relied on simplicity. We arranged for the tea appointment for the next Tuesday afternoon first. After a lot digging, we felt we had learned enough about the Spa so that it could wait for another day or two. It was exotic certainly but probably mostly harmless.

For our tea I dressed in my best suit, an expensive one Allison had recently bought for me that I had to admit looked pretty sharp. The three girls after considerable debate decided to avoid any subtlety and go straight for the jugular and they wore their three Set dresses. I was just grateful they didn't pick the out LBD's, sans panties and spend the whole tea sitting spread-eagle!

The address we were given was in a very exclusive neighborhood, near the River Oaks Country Club and must have encompassed at least 20 acres of wooded land, and high walls and a security system that seemed well beyond 'state of the art'. We were greeted at the door by a genuine English butler and escorted to into a open sunny room where we were cordially greeted by the Henderson's.

He seemed to be in his very late 60's and she looked to be either quite a bit younger or had remarkable genes and a superb stylist. Her eyes seemed mesmerizing and sharp, and she seeming quite capable of completely sizing the four of us up in mere moments. Her eyes and her hands stayed constantly busy and often played with a large gold and girasol (fire opal) ring on her hand.

Indeed, she was no person at all for small talk, and 'business' began even before the first sip of tea and tasty tidbit was consumed. She started with the large artillery first to soft us up.

"Allison, I see you're much improved since you have left the control of the Syndicate in San Diego, and I also must start by saying you have our gratitude for removing a certain Doctor "M" from his very active and overly invasive practice. I can assure you, that the two of us, and some of the men and women that we represent and can speak for, appreciate the many sacrifices that each of you has personally made."

Apparently, their organization, known very informally as the 'Ten Thousand', (ala Zenophon's classical Greek army that had humbled ancient Persia) was sort of an indirect rival to the Syndicates organization. They tended to be much more concerned with political power rather than overt uses of personal power. Those kinds of folks did exist in their own organization, she freely admitted, but for every person that was out to build an empire, there were at least two others that were trying in their own quiet way to make the world a slightly better place. We all nodded at that.

"Off course," she admitted with a smile, "that kind of extreme wealth and personal power, even if not exercised in evil ways, does lend to make a lot of grown men and women parade about their fetishes, perversions and sexual toys, trying to make the rest of us envious." She said with a smile and Mr. Henderson, who remained silent for most of the tea, nodded in agreement, before she continued.

"Why you ... and why now, you are asking?" She stated. "In short because we know just about everything there is to know about you and it took us more time and money than you would believe getting that information. You have been under some sort of light surveillance by some of us since your return from San Diego. You just can't expect at least fifty Syndicate members, including one of their highest, to be killed and hope to keep everything quiet. It took us a while to find the right leads and they all eventually led to you, but we liked what we saw. You wield your personal powers with unusual restraint. I must confess you did quite an excellent job concealing your money trail from the Caribbean. Ninety-Nine out of one hundred people would probably still be sitting on that island, drinking exotic drinks and plotting ways to spend an amount of money that would make even Sam Walton sit up in his coffin and take notice. But none of you are that 99%. In the end, it is your Foundation work that makes us believe firmly that you four are the sorts of people we want at our side and at our backs, quietly doing what good we all can and when and where we can. Why do we want you at our backs if things get interesting? Rather think instead if you would also rather have our people ready to protect yours. Too many people now know about you, your days of anonymity far from the eyes of the Syndicate are probably nearly over, if they don't know about you and your friends already. The toppling of the cream of their order hurt them, oh yes, but they are recovering and they badly want to know exactly who hurt them. Now that I have hopefully given you a good scare, let's discuss other more pleasant things for awhile, and when things get boring we can discuss our newest fetishes and compare our boy and girl toys," she giggled with a winking and a smile.

That pretty well burst our last bubble of privacy, and we filled the Henderson in with more details of Allison's life inside the Syndicate, our recovery of her and our group rehabilitation efforts.

She then showed us a small glass medicine bottle marked Batch #29 and asked, if we know anything about it? We admitted we had some similar vials of a Batch #31, but that we were nearly out of it and saw some potential for its use as a helpful psychiatric tool, rather than a mind-reprogramming drug. After more cautious discussion, we agreed to provide them with one of our last remaining vials in return for access to a fresh supply of it ... if it could be re-synthesized. The Henderson's seemed to feel that they had the ability to easily see this accomplished. They already had another (and rather unusual) couple involved in the final stages of tracking down the final needed rare ingredients.

While we did not figuratively hop into bed politically with the Henderson's, we ironed out a handshake deal that everyone could live with for now. The way rank was calculated within the order was fairly complicated and I never did figure it out entirely, but the Henderson's were very near the top. Apparently she was on the High Council of the Ten. We felt sure that we could and would work with her while we got a better feel for what the others might be up to. She did give us a hint that some loyalties within the order might be a bit 'uncertain' at present.

Other than her, I was given two other names that she felt at this time we could safely talk with freely.

We were next invited to attend a weekly get-together this Friday evening at their private club, where confidentiality and privacy were the bywords. If nothing else, as Mrs. Henderson suggested as we got ready to leave, "That will at least give your lovely girls a proper place to wear those deliciously obscenely short dresses and dance to their hearts content, without getting gang-raped, unless they they're in the mood for it!" She laughed.